Astrology 101: Decoding Your Natal Chart

A doc to help you learn astrology basics (what even is astrology?) and get familiar with your natal chart

Nicole Macdonald

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Hey! 👋 My name is Nicole. I made this doc to help me learn more about my natal chart.

I became interested in astrology almost a decade ago in my early twenties at a time when I was feeling incredibly lost.

In particular, I remember feeling like I was the only one in my friend group who didn’t know what they wanted to do with their life, and I was ready to do anything to find some clarity because the traditional routes of self-exploration were not gaining me any traction.

I don’t remember who, but somebody suggested looking at my birth chart.

I didn’t know what that was, so I went to Google:

“What the heck is a birth chart?”

And from there, I quickly fell into the rabbit hole of modern astrology.

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I had no idea there was more to your personal astrology than just your sun sign, and that reading your horoscope for your sun sign is actually kind of inaccurate 👀 → check out

Astrology Basics Bootcamp⁠

for more on that

Your sun sign is just one piece of the puzzle that is you. Having all the pieces of the puzzle helps a ton in figuring out the ways you show up in the world, where your personal pitfalls are, and what your innate gifts are.

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Was astrology the answer to all my problems?

Of course not! Though it did help me gain a better understanding of myself. And I’m betting it won’t be the answers to all your problems, either, because that’s not the purpose of astrology. Astrology is a tool for self-discovery. It’s not here to predict your future. Freedom of choice is a beautiful thing! But just like any other tool, astrology can be used incorrectly.

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Your birth chart is calculated from the precise moment and geographic coordinates of your birth. Your birth chart brings the skies down to you, forming your personal roadmap for this life.

It can help you more easily identify positive and negative patterns in your life, where you may need some support, and where you’re more naturally equipped to support others.

Once you’re familiar with your birth chart, you can start looking at the current planetary transits to see what they mean for you, personally.

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Maybe even figure out what the big deal is with Mercury retrograde⁠

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But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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Ready to get started on your astrology journey?

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Making sense of the wheel.

An astrological birth chart is usually presented in a wheel chart, like so:

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Screen Shot 2022-04-19 at 8.35.27 AM.png

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But if you’re new to astrology, looking at this hot mess complicated interpretation of the sky at your birth can be quite intimidating. So, in order to make my learning process easier, I thought extracting the above information and placing it into a nice, clean table might make things a little easier on me.

Additionally, I wanted to have one central place to keep track of my astrology learnings AND view my birth chart, instead of flipping between 6 different tabs in my browser and 3 books laid out across my lap.

So please, read through this doc, learn some basic astrology and plug in your own natal astrology placements! Follow the instructions below to make this doc your own!

A note on sources: Almost every page of this doc has sources linked at the bottom of the page, and I’ve also made a list of ALL the sources located in
Sources⁠
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Please check those out and give these professional astrologers their due kudos. I’m learning just like you are, and don’t aim to take credit for their content and hard work. I’ve only collected it here in this doc for ease ✌️

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